CHAPTER XIV.
"EXTRA" MEASUREMENTS. TOAD-STOOL CONTRACTORS, TESTIMONIALS.
"Have you managed to get a bit 'extra' out of measurements?"
"Yes, occasionally, but that game is about played out. In the good old times they used to let us all kinds of work, for we did business in company more then than we do now, and what one did not know the other did, and so we could do pretty nearly everything except metal work, so long as they supplied us with the materials.
"I have already named about the 'extra' depth of foundations in bridges, and pipes that were not so large as thought. I have also got a bit 'extra' from side ditching when they had taken no cross sections of the ground by leaving a few buoys or mounds at the highest parts. I have also had a trifle out of the cuttings by rounding off the slopes a few inches when they were long but working right to the slope peg at top and nicking in an inch or two at the foot of the slope; but the game is hardly worth the candle, as they have almost given up soiling the slopes. Then there was a chance both ways. You got more measurement than the actual excavation, and also a bit 'extra' for soiling that was not put in, but it does not run into enough money to make it pay safely, and as the slopes and formation are so much on show the fun is hardly worth the risk. There is more to be had, so far as earthworks are concerned, in road approaches than railway cuttings, and in docks than either."
"I think you are right there."
"You see the earthwork is not so much in patches in dockwork, but all together, and there is often as much in an acre or so of dock as in a whole railway four or five miles in length, and inches in dockwork are worth remembering. Besides they are not noticed so much, and the excavation is soon covered up; and if it is in clay, and found out, you can always say to the bosses—'I never saw such clay to swell in patches.' Be sure to say 'in patches' for then you have an excuse handy if the clay 'swells' nowhere else except at the place you have not excavated to the right depth. You can generally get the surface not exactly level throughout, and you have a large space to work on then, and every inch means sovereigns. Really I think it does no one any harm, and does good to me if the bottom is a trifle elevated. It comes rather easy to most of us to make ourselves think a thing is good and nice when it would cost us something to think otherwise."
"Yes. Money and our wishes usually work on the same main line."
"I once got done out of a bit 'extra' measurement by an engineer really lovely."